Free/​Open Source isn’t just about software, it’s also about hardware. Open hardware projects are proliferating, and just like open source software, you can get started inexpensively. Here are three projects that are fun, useful, and suitable for beginners to embedded programming, robotics, and building electronic devices.

Today BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE announced the formation of the Open Virtualization Alliance. The announcement says that the consortium will "promote examples of customer successes, encourage interoperability and accelerate the expansion of the ecosystem of third-party solutions around KVM, providing businesses improved choice, performance and price for virtualization."

The Budapest Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS-O) kicked off on Monday, May 9, at the Corinthia Hotel. "Accessibility is one of our core values as a project," Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said in his keynote address, as he acknowledged the Unity documentation team contributions to the 11.04 release. After briefly looking back at the "Natty Narwhal" Ubuntu release, Shuttleworth set his sights on the upcoming release, saying, "Our goal, our mission is 200-million Ubuntu users in four years."